Why Did Jesus Think He Had To Die? Part 2
The Empty Cross of Christ No. 3
Why Did Jesus Think He Had To Die?
Part II--Preached: Morganton Church of Christ, Morganton, NC 3/1/2009 AM
I. Introduction.
A. We began a discussion last Sunday asking the question, “Why did Jesus think He had to die?”
1. We saw that Jesus first spoke of His death as inevitable.
2. We saw that it was the fulfillment of OT Scripture.
3. We explored how it was the Father’s will.
4. And we examined how His death was entirely voluntary.
B. But this by no means exhausts the subject of why Jesus HAD to die!
1. We are not saying that there are more important reasons than these.
2. Just that there are more reasons, and these also are important and worth our time to explore.
C. Ephesians 3:10 speaks of the MANIFOLD WISDOM OF GOD, and 1 Peter 4:10 speaks of the MANIFOLD GRACE OF GOD.
1. “Manifold” indicates that there are many components, many sides to this wisdom and this grace.
2. Because of this, it is difficult to imagine that the meaning behind the death of Christ wouldn’t also be manifold. Indeed it is.
D. This is one reason, though not the only reason, that it is of divine origin, for no man could have aligned into one event the manifold reasons that the cross became the very hinge of history.
E. Let us continue our search of the cross as we ask, “Why did Jesus think He Had to Die?”
II. Body.
A. By His Death He IDENTIFIED WITH SINNERS.
1. Jesus made this very point from the very beginning. Think about it. How did He make Himself known to Israel?
a. Was it not initially at His baptism?
b. John the Baptist was so shocked at His coming for baptism that we read:
Matt 3:14 But John tried to prevent Him, saying, "I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?"
c. Why would Jesus be baptized by John, when John’s ministry was to those who needed their sins forgiven?
Matt 3:5-6 Then Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea, and all the district around the Jordan; (6) and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.
d. But Jesus was declaring from the very beginning that He came to identify with sinners.
2. During His ministry, Jesus received sinners gladly.
Matt 9:10 And it happened that as He was reclining at the table in the house, behold many tax-gatherers and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples.
Matt 11:19 "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds."
The religious leaders questioned why He would do this, and He gave reply:
Luke 5:30-31 And the Pharisees and their scribes began grumbling at His disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with the tax-gatherers and sinners?" (31) And Jesus answered and said to them, "It is not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick.
The religious leaders grumbled because of this (Lk. 15:2).
3. The events leading up to and including the cross show this same character, of one concerned about others, not Himself, about sinners being forgiven rather than His righteousness being vindicated.
a. He told the women who wept for Him along the road to Golgotha to weep instead for themselves and their children (Lk. 23:28).
b. He promised the repentant thief to be with Him in Paradise that day (Lk. 23:43).
c. He prayed that God would forgive those who were guilty of His death and of hurling abuse at Him, because they didn’t know what they were doing (Lk. 23:34).
4. Since Jesus identified with us, culminating in the cross, He causes us to identify with Him, and place ourselves, our sins, there. It was that realization that caused me to break down and reject my false ideas of self-sufficiency, and led to my conversion to Christ, and I doubt not that it is that same realization that brings all who come to repentance to Him.
B. His Death was GOD’S JUDGMENT ON THE WORLD.
1. Jesus made this plain when He placed His declaration of God’s judgment on the world right up next to this declaration about the cross:
John 12:31-32 "Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world shall be cast out. (32) "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself."
2. The same theme occurs many times in John’s Gospel, but also comes in more pictorial ways in the other Gospels. One of the strongest is the parable of the wicked husbandmen in Mark 12:1-9, which is itself based on Isaiah’s parable in Isaiah 5:1-7.
a. God, like the vineyard owner, looks for some return from His tenants, but gets none.
b. He sends one servant after another for the fruit, but they get mistreated, and finally killed.
c. Last of all, he decides to send “his beloved son,” saying “They will respect my son.”
d. But the tenants said to one another, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him and the inheritance will be ours!” So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard.
e. So Jesus then asks, “What will the owner of the vineyard do?” Then He answers, which gets to our point: “He will come and destroy the tenants.”
f. To rub in the theme of judgment, Jesus then makes a pun that is does not come across in our English translations. He takes the word for “SON” in the Hebrew (ben), and replaces it with the word for stone (eben):
Mark 12:10 "Have you not even read this Scripture: 'THE STONE (eben) WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone;
3. Of course, they were ultimately rejecting the SON (ben). Rather than Roman judgment upon Jesus in crucifying Him, the bigger picture is God’s judgment on mankind through that cross:
John 12:47-48 "And if anyone hears My sayings, and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. (48) "He who rejects Me, and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.
4. The very fact of identifying with sinners BRINGS Jesus to the cross, where their judgment is placed on Him. Those who will not come to Jesus, have that judgment returned upon their own heads, as unwittingly acknowledged by the crowd who clamored for His death before Pilate:
Matt 27:25
And all the people answered and said, "His blood be on us and on our children!"
C. His Death was The One & Only Effective Sacrifice.
1. Remember that the Lord’s Supper was instituted in the midst of the Passover Meal, which celebrated Israel’s freedom from Egyptian captivity and was always accompanied by the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb.
a. When Jesus instituted His supper, instead of referring to the lamb or the “bread of affliction” eaten by their forefathers in the Exodus, Jesus says, “This is My body,” and “This is My blood of the covenant.”
b. By speaking in this way, about His body broken and His blood poured out, there could be no mistaking that Jesus was referring to His death and saying that it would be a violent death.
c. By inserting these statements about His body and His blood here in the Passover supper, there is also a tacit admission that His death, His blood, will fulfill the pattern of the Exodus when the blood of the lamb was sprinkled on the doorposts so that as the judgment of death would pass over and not fall on ancient Israel, and initiate their coming out of bondage, so also the body of Jesus was offered as OUR Passover, and HIS blood is applied to WHERE WE LIVE, that we may not suffer death and be brought out of bondage! The Lord’s Supper itself coming out of the Passover meal, reminds us of this! It is the ULTIMATE Passover, the ULTIMATE exodus!
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